Hey guys, I've been dealing with some issues after i installed my Radeon 7950. After a couple minutes of use explorer freezes up but my mouse and gadgets are still active (clock, cpu usage, etc). After another couple of minutes I get the BSOD with the following message:

I've updated to the latest catalyst drivers, ran windows update, updates the firmware on my SSD, but I'm running out of ideas. Safe mode suffers from the same problem, so I'm not really sure what's going on.

Could be lots of reasons... Your power supply might be too weak, or the card might be defective... Try re-seating the card (remove it then re-insert into slot), maybe try using different PCIe slot (if your motherboard has one)... If you have spare PC (or have a friend with compatible PC) - try using this card in it.

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If I were you, i would start with Mobo Bios update, second try to see if PSU is up for taking the load of HD 7950, third try to reseat the card, forth try the card in other computer and if nothing works, RMA the card.

Well, since you get the same results with other card and your PSU is most likely good - I'd try to visually inspect the motherboard's surface, to see if there's any "accidental" physical damage to any of its components... I would also inspect how your motherboard is mounted inside the case (maybe remove it completely), see if it "touches" the case in an inappropriate ways

Also, try this: disconnect your SSD drive and use a spare HDD instead - install your OS on it, your apps/games and see how your system runs without SSD. This way you will at least know if the problem is caused by SSD or if it's fine...

Last edited by JohnC on Fri Feb 15, 2013 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Shmeal wrote:Doesn't appear to have any bad contact. Updating bios is next i guess.

EDIT: Maybe I'm just stupid, but the MSI instructions on how to update BIOS are not very good.....I have no idea what they want me to do haha

Well, if your motherboard has built-in BIOS flash function somewhere in its BIOS settings - use that (just unzip the downloaded BIOS files on USB flash drive, plug it in and use the flash utility in the BIOS to locate your flash drive and load BIOS update from it)... Otherwise make a bootable USB flash drive (if MSI doesn't provide instructions - find a generic guide on internet), unzip the BIOS file (and the flashing utility which should be in same zipped file) into this USB flash drive and boot from it (set your BIOS to "boot from removable drive" or whatever it's called), then after you boot from USB drive you have to type in specific command to initialize flashing process (see the MSI's site, it should tell you what you have to type)... Or download their Windows-based utility which should do everything automagically

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pogsnet wrote:Safest way is to reinstall your OS, to be sure you may make another windows from another partition to try its stability then its up to you to completely reformat your system.

Re-install the OS for a driver switch? That's wholly unnecessary, especially when OP has established that it crashes in safe mode too.

Shmeal, I'd definitely try to boot into Linux-on-a-stick and use that for a bit of browsing while you eat your proverbial sandwich. If that still crashes, you're 100% sure that it's a hardware problem.

I decided to do the "burn this motherf**ker to the ground" approach and tried to reinstall my OS. The installation fails on my SSD, and when the system restarts, the SSD no longer showed up on the boot menu until I the computer is actually turned off and then turned on again.

Used an old platter drive to install windows and it looks like it went just fine. I had to leave while chkdsk was going on because I was trying to get this all done before a business trip but it looks like I might just have to get a new SSD.

Shmeal wrote:Used an old platter drive to install windows and it looks like it went just fine. I had to leave while chkdsk was going on because I was trying to get this all done before a business trip but it looks like I might just have to get a new SSD.

Might be a good time to migrate to Win8 I guess!

I will give you guys an update when I get back in a couple of days.

Yea... You can find plenty of posts from OCZ's own SSD forums if you just Google something like "OCZ stop f4 error"

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Got everything to work! Had to swap out the SSD for a newer, prettier model.

Now I have no clue why my third monitor always reverts to super low resolution every time I come out of screensaver or when windows first starts up. Unplugging the displayport cable, turning off the monitor, and then reconnecting everything brings it back to 1080p. Nothing else seems to do the trick